For my Little 500 Influence Poster, I chose Josef Müller-Brockmann as my influence. Ever since I learned about who Müller-Brockmann was in Graphic Design I, I have been a fan of his work. I have always loved the Swiss design style – I just didn’t know who the pioneers where. Müller-Brockmann’s design style and the Swiss design style are both very similar to my individual style and I really enjoyed understanding Müller-Brockmann ‘s work flow and specifics better.
Josef Müller-Brockmann was born in Rapperswil, Switzerland, in 1914. He grew up in a time of influential design, and has mentioned inspiration from the Bauhaus and Constructivist movements. He went on to study graphic design and architecture at Zürich School or Arts and Crafts. He then opened his own design studio in Zürich, and his career took off. He was famously known for his typographic and geometric posters, which generally followed a strict grid system. He went on to design a famous series of posters for Zürich Tonhalle in the 1950s (shown below). He is famously known for his book, Grid Systems in Graphic Design, published in 1961. It emphasizes the importance and visual ease of using the grid system in design, one that he commonly used. Müller-Brockmann was a professor at Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich from 1957 to 1960, and continued to guest lecture at many universities. He died in Zürich in 1966. He has left a major impact on the world of graphic design, and is a major pioneer in Swiss design.
When doing my research on Brockmann, I wanted to also understand how he was as a person. In researching, I found a few first hand accounts of him which were very endearing to me. A student at Arizona State University who was lucky enough to have Brockmann visit his class wrote, “once I was in his calm, yet playful, presence, the impact of his stopover became clearly apparent”. I thought this was important to note because his calm, yet playful presence is clearly echoed in his design. This student was also lucky enough to receive a critique from Brockmann, and with ease mentioned that “reduction of content can make all the difference in the outcome of a design” and I kept this in mind while designing my posters. In this same visit to the classroom at Arizona State University, a student asked Brockmann to show his business card. “As JMB casually pulled the business card out of his coat pocket, there was a frenzy like fish at a pond when the morsels are tossed in. He was taken aback as we scurried around to take a peak at the card revealed; novice typographers eager to see his miniature piece of art. I still remember the card clearly. It was on light gray paper stock printed with a solitary color of cool gray ink. All content was in a singular sans serif face, all lowercase, and no punctuation to speak of other than the umlaut and hyphen in his distinguished name. No commas, no periods, no colons. All the elements on the card were restricted to the purest of necessary elements. In that small space he proved the mastery of minimalism; communication clearly achieved without the use of a period or a comma. The execution of an all lowercase solution, which has influenced my own design solutions to this day, and a restrained use of typographic elements was an awe-inspiring lesson, visually delivered. He didn’t need to speak a word.” In reading this first hand account, I was inspired to keep my design hyper simple, while still conveying what needs to be conveyed.
I designed three posters because I had time and because of the simplicity of Brockmann’s designs. For my first poster (below, black) I was inspired by Brockmann’s use of simplistic lines and thought this would be a great opportunity to echo the lines of the track at Bill Armstrong Stadium. I referred to many of Brockmann’s numerous poster designs to understand how he uses type and where he places it on his posters. He tends to highlight important parts of the message in red, which I also chose to echo. And of course, the iconic Helvetica was the font I used, as it was the font Brockmann used his entire design career.
In the second poster (below, blue) I wanted to reference Brockmann’s common use of circles, and different opacities. In designing this poster, I saw the opportunity to place the circles in a way that looked like cyclists. I thought that this was very interesting, and a simplistic way to show that it is a bike race. in terms of type, referencing Brockmann’s business card, I made it as simple as possible, all in lowercase.
In the third poster (beneath, red) I noticed that Brockmann used a lot of rectangles, which I wanted to echo but with a twist. I made the rectangles larger on one side, to represent looking down at cyclists. I made them in the formation that they are because when you look down at the cyclists on the Little 500 track, this is commonly the pack formation that they are in. I made them different opacities to represent the different teams, something that I noticed Brockmann does in many of his designs. I thought that changing the opacity and not the color would make the poster look cleaner. As for the type, I took a similar look from Brockmann’s poster “Der Film” from 1959. I thought that this type treatment matches well with the visual element of the design.
I really love how these posters turned out. I think that they work well together – they all represent different views of Little 500, and I think they have the potential to be used in a campaign-like setting. I am a big fan of Josef Müller-Brockmann’s designs and really enjoyed researching him and using him as an influence for my Little 500 poster.
